An interactional history of categorization and reference to an embodied action: How changing references are used to develop the referent itself in a series of theater rehearsals

In theater rehearsals, participants cooperate in order to create a stable performance. We report on changes in the choice of expressions that members of a theater crew use for referring to an embodied figure across 44 rehearsals of a single scene in which the figure occurs. We show how lexical changes over the interactional history are tied both to the emergence of common ground and to reconceptualizations of the referent. Participants change expressions referring to the same referent in order to develop the play, leading to changes in the referent itself, which is implemented by the embodied practices of the actors. The referential trajectory thus reflects the creative nature of the participants’ activity in this setting. We use multimodal conversation analysis to show how professionals use verbal and embodied resources for constructing and understanding referential expressions tailored to the relevancies of their work. Data are in German.